According to the record books, the Pan-American Highway is the longest road in the world, stretching some 30,000 kilometers (19,000 miles) from Alaska to the southern tip of Argentina. However, depending on who you ask, a few people might take issue with that assertion.
The vision of the Pan-American Highway was first proposed in 1923 by the US. Although it was pitched as a fraternal and idealistic venture to bind distant nations, some argue that it was essentially a ploy to boost sales of US-made cars and other exports to Latin America.
In 1924, US officials invited 37 delegates from Latin America to Washington DC to hear their sales pitch and, after years of wrangling, an agreement was reached. The Convention on the Pan-American Highway was signed in 1937 by Argentina, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, and the US.
Progress wasn’t quick, though. In the early 1970s, President Nixon boasted that the continent-crossing mega-highway would be completed imminently, but numerous gaps and dead ends remained.
In fact, even today, the Pan-American Highway isn’t fully connected and you can’t drive its full length. A glaring break in the road can be found in Darién Gap, the skinny 160-kilometer-long (100-mile-long) strand of land that connects Panama to Colombia.
Mind The Darién Gap: A map of the Pan-American Highway’s route.
Image credit: Rainer Lesniewski/Shutterstock.com
Enveloped in dense jungle and seasonal rains, no road passes through the Darién Gap at all, not even a dirt road.
There was a push to build the Pan-American Highway through the gap in the 1970s, which the US pledged to fund the majority of, but it was hotly opposed by environmentalists who argued it would spell disaster for the region’s biodiversity and Indigenous communities.
To top it off, the region is frequented by armed militias, dangerous gangs, and drug traffickers, making it an extremely dangerous place to cross.
Despite this gap, the Pan-American Highway still holds the Guinness World Record for the “longest motorable road.”
A worthy competitor of the title is Asian Highway 1 (AH1), the longest route of the Asian Highway Network that runs for 20,557 km (12,774 miles) from the Japanese capital of Tokyo to the Turkish-Bulgarian border, traveling through Korea, China, Southeast Asia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Iran.
However, once again, you’ll probably notice that this isn’t continuous either. Over 942 kilometers (585 miles) of sea separates Japan and South Korea, plus it’s not possible for most civilians to cross the Demilitarized Zone that separates South Korea and North Korea.
Australia’s Highway 1 is arguably the longest fully drivable road and longest national road, circling the outer edge of the whole island for around 14,500 kilometers (9,000 miles). It holds the Guinness World Record for the “Longest continuous road”. A group of guys called the “Highway 1 to Hell” team set the record for completing this route a few years ago, circumnavigating the whole of Australia in 5 days, 13 hours, and 43 minutes.
In other words, the answer to “What’s The Longest Road In The World?” probably depends on who you ask – and how forgiving they are of gigantic gaps in supposedly continuous roads.
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